In the past, Authors have been honored
in many ways by their fans. One of the most pequliar has been
exibeted by one of Apollo's own astaunats who named a crater
on the moon "Dandelion Crater" after one of the few
non science fiction books of great sci-fi author Ray Bradbury.
Bradbury is no stranger to honors, but this will probably remain
one of the strangest honors bestowed upon him.

Depending on how you look at it, Ray
Bradbury is either an expert creator of fiction and poetry, or
a matchless stretcher of the truth.
Either way, he is still a vital, respected, and well-loved literary
giant, over 40 years after publishing his first best-seller,
The Martian Chronicles. He is thought of by many as the world's
greatest living writer of science fiction and fantasy stories.

Today, he writes not only short stories
and novels, but also plays, screenplays, poetry, essays and even
a few songs. Over the past few years he has produced his own
television series, comic books, books-on-tape and software. At
the age of 75, this Los Angeles author is fast becoming one of
the new kings of multi-media.

Meeting with fans at the Fullerton Public
Library on Nov. 28, 1995, Bradbury exalted in the opportunity
to share anecdotes and spin yarns.

He has repeated certain favorite stories
many times over the years. Many of these seem too polished and
smooth to be 100 percent true. He often seems to embellish the
truth for effect. However, his admirers seldom care. Skill and
half a century of practice have empowered him to suspend our
disbelief.

One of these favored stories concerns
an early meeting with his boyhood hero, film director John Huston.
Ray acts out the parts of his younger self, with a high and nervous
voice, and Huston, with a dead-on bear-like growl.

"[Huston] invited me in, put a
drink in my hand, sat me down, sat next to me and said, 'Well
Ray, what are you doing during the next year?'

"I said, 'Not much Mr. Huston.
Not much.'

"He said, 'Well, I'll tell you
what, Ray -- How would you like come live in Ireland and write
the screenplay for Moby Dick?'

"I said, 'Gee Mr. Huston, I've
never been able to read the damned thing.'"

At this point, the audience erupted
with laughter.

"[Huston] said, 'Tell you what,
Ray -- Why don't you go home tonight, read as much as you can,
come back tomorrow, and tell me if you'll help me kill the white
whale.'

"I went home that night and said
to my wife, 'Pray for me.' She asked why, and I said, 'Because
I have to read a book tonight and do a book report tomorrow."

In another anecdote, Bradbury told how
he proposed to his wife, Marguerite.

"I said to her, 'I'm going to the
moon. I'm going to Mars. Do you want to come along?' She said,
'Yes.' It was the best damn answer I ever got."

Dr. Willis McNelly, a long time friend
of Bradbury's, who has written numerous scholarly articles about
his work, says that Bradbury's writing "seems to intensify
the ordinary."

Now retired from teaching at Cal State
Fullerton, McNelly talked about his friend.

"He is a very kind and loving man,"
said McNelly. Then he added with a slight smile, "Ray is
also a consummate liar."

When Bradbury writes or speaks, the
line between solid fact and metaphor gets hazy. He often adds
his own details to true stories to make them more interesting
or illustrative. It's difficult to tell whether Bradbury has
come to believe his own elaboration or not. When discrepancies
are pointed out to him, he happily acknowledges them as metaphors.
Those who have seen Return of the Jedi are reminded of Sir Alec
Guinness arguing that truth depends on one's "certain point
of view."

For example, in 1952, Bradbury gave
a long and detailed account of a particular childhood experience
at the carnival:

"Mr. Electrico was the man at the
Labor Day carnival... He was a miracle of magic, seated in the
electric chair, swathed in black velvet robes, his face burning
like white phosphor, blue sparks hissing from his fingertips
if you put out your hand to touch him. ...I went again and again,
day and night, to see him take the ten thousand volts the barker
said were surging and burning in his frail body...

"...[Mr. Electrico] told me that
he had met me before, many years ago, that he had seen my eyes,
my look, in the face of a young man who had died in his arms
on the battlefields of France in the first World War."

"Of course I was greatly impressed
and thrilled with Mr. Electrico's account; I felt myself part
of a much larger world than that surrounding me. I felt quite
immortal and gifted with a part of someone from the past."

Bradbury, in his enthusiasm, recounted
each detail of the event. However, since 1952, the emphasis of
the anecdote has shifted. In a 1995 re-telling, Mr. Electrico
takes up a large sword during his act, and reaches out with it
to dub young Ray with immortality. &qout;Live forever!"
shouts Mr. Electrico, as blue lightning crackles down the sword
and into the awe-struck boy.

In October of 1995, Bradbury re-told
the tale of Mr. Electrico in an appearance on Later, with Conan
O'Brian. This time, he asserted that the experience helped direct
him toward being a writer.

"What better way is there to become
immortal," he asked, "than to write every day of your
life?"

In his 1996 story, "The Electrocution,"
the tale of Mr. Electrico takes one last twist. The character
is now Elektra, with a husband who throws the power switch at
each show. The side-show electric-chair is used as a metaphor
for the couples' rapidly disintegrating relationship.

The more Bradbury twists the facts,
the more he is able to wring from them. Being a good storyteller
may simply mean keeping a tale's foundation in the truth while
being a "consummate liar" when it makes for more interesting
reading. This sort of flexibility helps Bradbury sees stories
in places others would never think to look.

Walking along a Southern California
beach at the age of 29, Bradbury came upon the ruins of an old
seaside rollercoaster rusting in the sand and surf.

"I looked at the spinal cord of
the roller coaster. I turned to my wife and said, 'I wonder what
that dinosaur is doing lying here on the beach?' She was very
careful not to answer.

"A few nights later, I awoke in
the middle of the night. Something had called me awake. I sat
up in bed and looked out the window, and for ten miles up the
coast there was nothing but fog and mist and rain. But way out
in the Santa Monica Bay, I heard this voice calling over, and
over, and over again. It was the foghorn calling.

"I said, 'Yes! That's it! The dinosaur
heard the foghorn blowing, thought it was another dinosaur, and
rose from a million years of slumber. He swam for an encounter
with this other beast, only to discover that it was a damn lighthouse
and a damn foghorn. He tore the whole thing down, swam back,
and died of a broken heart.'

"The next morning," said Bradbury,
"I got up and wrote, 'The Foghorn.'"

Over the years, "The Foghorn"
has been adapted into movies, radio shows, books on tape, comic
books, and has been included in innumerable story collections
and high school English texts.

The question people most frequently
ask Bradbury is where he gets his ideas. The tale of finding
a dinosaur on the beach is only one of the examples he uses to
illustrate how he is inspired.

"I think I'm very fortunate that
God gave me the genetics to do what I've done," he said.

Bradbury believes that the trick to
success is to love what you're doing with your whole heart. This
is hardly an original sentiment, but Bradbury expresses it in
his own signature way. He drives the point home like a gospel
preacher. His speaking engagement at the Fullerton Library was
heavily seasoned with exclamation points.

"The thing is to be madly, madly
in love all the time," he told the audience. "If you're
not hyperventilating, there's something wrong. Go home tonight,
lie in bed, and say to yourself, 'Why am I not hyperventilating?'
There's got to be some reason: Your favorite writer, your favorite
poet, your favorite artist, your favorite dancer, or your favorite
computerologist."

Bradbury credits this enthusiasm with
his ability to get up every morning, go immediately to his electric
typewriter and produce another chapter, poem, or essay.

"There's got to be something that
when you get out of the bed in the morning, you say, 'I can hardly
wait!' I've been that way now since I was a kid. I have morning
voices that speak to me at 7:00 and tell me what I'm going to
do."

At an early age, Bradbury began compiling
his list of manias: Movies, comic strips, Egyptian history, mythology,
theater, dinosaurs, Halloween, and of course, dreams of the future.

"When I was eight years old, science
fiction magazines came into the country with their fabulous architectural
renderings of future cities. Those were the metaphors of a possible
future where I might live. I wanted to slip into the covers of
the science fiction magazines and live there and never come out
because they were so gorgeous."

Indeed, Bradbury followed his muse without
hesitation and slipped into the covers of those magazines, taking
millions of readers with him.

In October of 1929, when he was nine
years old, Bradbury discovered Buck Rogers on the Sunday comics
page. He was immediately drawn to the illustrated tale of time
travel and adventure, and began to cut out and save the panels.
Even now, Bradbury wistfully recounts the early adventures of
Buck Rogers and Wilma Deering:

"She had an inertron belt on her
back, a device which repelled gravity so you could float and
fly. That image of flight and pursuit has stayed with me to this
day."

Bradbury's collection of comic strips
grew until it started to create problems for him. Other children
in his Waukegan, Illinois fifth-grade class were making fun of
him.

Upset and self-conscious, he made a
rash decision. In what was to become a turning point in his life
and philosophy, he threw out his entire collection.

"Two or three days later I broke
into tears. I sat down, crying, and said, 'Why are you weeping?
Who died?' And the answer was, 'You. You have killed yourself.
You have killed the future.'

Having betrayed his passion, young Bradbury
looked for a way to repair the damage. An older, wiser Bradbury
remembers how he put things right:

"I went back and collected the
comic strips and I began to write about the future when I was
twelve. After that, I never listened to another damn fool again
in my entire life. You can't -- Not about the aesthetic things."

One recent Bradbury project includes
a wide variety of the aesthetic disciplines. Part literature,
part movie, part game, and with a heavy dose of architecture
and science, The Martian Chronicles Adventure CD-ROM is the author's
first foray into computer software. After his lecture at the
library and one of his popular book-signing events, Bradbury
discussed his latest venture.

"It takes it the next step. That's
the whole reason for it," he said.

Bradbury feels the designers have done
an excellent job of extrapolating from his original vision, and
is comfortable with the creative additions made to his Martian
landscape.

"Let them jump off from my springboard,"
he said. "That's where the fun comes. I didn't want to control
them. Let them have fun too."

The idea of a Martian Chronicles CD-ROM
did not originate with Bradbury himself, but he was happy to
see it happen and act as consultant. He describes his role modestly:

"I just said, 'Go do it!' It looks
quite lovely."

The author knows little about computer
science and doesn't even use a word processor in his writing.
Still, he is the father of one of today's hottest technological
properties: virtual reality.

In 1946, Bradbury wrote the story, "The
Veldt," which described in vivid detail the dangers of playing
in a computer-generated environment. At the end of the story,
two children lure their parents into a virtual reality playroom,
where virtual lions devour them in a simulated Serengeti. All
this, 50 years before "VR" gaming arcades, Star Trek
holodecks, and The Lawnmower Man.

As time passes, more and more of Bradbury's
science-fictions, metaphors, and the little white lies of storytelling
are becoming realities.

Now that the technology of "The
Veldt" has come to pass, Bradbury is unimpressed with what
he sees. However, he recognizes its potential.

"Well, they've got to put a brain
in it, don't they? Otherwise, it's meaningless. I'm telling that
to people involved with virtual reality all the time."

Does he think the day will come when
his once-fictional invention lives up to its promise? Will the
programmers and scientists ever get it right?